Tamar (38 page)

In the dayroom, Sister Juliana was playing her five-stringed guitar to half a dozen patients. One of them was Sidona. As he walked to the door, he heard Juliana say, soothingly, “No, no, dear. That’s not Trago. That’s Dr. Lubbers. You know Dr. Lubbers. He’s nice.”

He went out through the conservatory. In the west, beyond the skeletal trees, the sky was lemon yellow, but darkness was gathering in the air. He turned right towards the kitchen garden and stopped when he saw Albert Veening and Sister Agatha. They were both staring vacantly at the ground. She had been digging but was now resting on the handle of her spade. The lower part of Albert’s face was buried in a woollen scarf, and he leaned forward inside his oversized coat, his shoulders hunched up. He looked like an ancient bird waiting for something edible to emerge from the soil. Dart walked down to them. He lit a cigarette and gave it to Albert, who took two drags before handing it back.

“How is our patient?” Albert asked.

Dart shrugged. “Still feverish. He won’t let me touch him. His wounds will need fresh dressings. I think you or Agatha will have to do it.”

Albert reached out, and Dart gave him the remains of the cigarette.

Albert said, “Sister Agatha thinks it is unwise to keep him here. We do not have the resources. The food.”

Agatha gave him a look full of impatience. “It’s not that,” she said. “He is a danger to us.”

“Just as I am,” Dart said.

“Not in the same way,” the nun said. “Mr. de Vries is full of hate. Poison. I can smell it on the air. And I’m not the only one. Several of the patients have been noticeably more disturbed since he arrived, even though none of them have seen him. Sidona is very distressed, for example. She cannot understand why none of her good angels have visited for the last couple of days.”

“Oh, come on, Agatha,” Albert protested.

“Don’t ‘oh come on’ me, Albert. Sidona may be crazy, but she has a good nose for evil.”

Albert withdrew a little farther into his scarf and coat, like a careful tortoise. For several moments there was no sound in the garden other than the harsh calls of the rooks. Against the fading light their nests looked like blood clots in a web of black veins.

Dart said, “How long before he’s mobile, do you think?”

Albert sighed. “Hard to tell. The wounds aren’t the main problem, as long as they don’t get infected. It’ll be very painful for him to walk, but he could do it. He’ll be extremely weak, for obvious reasons. He needs a quiet place to rest. And good food.”

“Which we can’t provide,” Agatha said.

Dart watched the rooks. The elms were filling with their restless black shapes. “Can you think of anywhere else he could go?”

“We all know what he has done,” Albert said quietly. “As a result, the poor man has become a plague virus. He delivers a death warrant to anyone who shelters him.”

“Exactly,” Sister Agatha said. “If the Nazis find him here, you know what will happen to us. And if they take us, what do you think will happen to our patients? They’ll be sent to a place worse than hell and die there.”

After a pause, Dart said, “What about the Maartens place?”

When the garden was half filled with shadows, Tamar straightened and let the handle of the spade rest against his thigh. Close to his feet the four surviving hens dragged and stabbed at the upturned soil. The cockerel patrolled some distance away, warily twitching his head and groaning. Tamar stood watching the edge of the sky deepen from yellow to amber. He knew Marijke was there before she spoke.

“You’ve done well.”

He turned. She had her grandmother’s ancient black coat draped over her shoulders and her arms tightly folded. Tamar thought she looked fragile — something he’d never thought before.

“Yeah, not bad. What should we plant here? Potatoes?”

“We’ve been eating the seed potatoes for the past two weeks,” Marijke said. “Hadn’t you noticed?”

“Ah. What else then?”

“There’s carrot seed. I don’t remember what else. I haven’t checked.”

“Fine,” he said. “We’ll sow carrots.”

She leaned against him, her head sideways on his chest. “Are you sure you want to do all this?”

“Yes, of course. We have to, don’t we?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure if I believe we . . . Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it.”

He wanted to touch her face, but there was soil on his hands. He took her by the shoulders and made her look at him. “It’s worth it,” he said. “We’ll be all right.”

So she smiled and then looked away from him. “If we’re going to sow, we’ll have to fix these fences to keep the chickens out. We ought to clip their wings too.”

“We’ll do it,” he said. “We’ll do everything. You’ll have to show me how, though. I know damn all about this business. Now, come on. Let’s get inside. You look cold.”

She put her left hand on his chest to stop him and looked into his eyes. “You have to promise me something,” she said. “Promise me that if you have to go you’ll take me with you. Don’t leave me here alone. I can’t do that anymore.”

“I won’t go. I’m staying here. We’re staying here together.”

“Promise me anyway.”

Tamar packed the transceiver away and descended the barn stairs shortly after eleven o’clock. He was almost at the door when he remembered what she’d said, what he’d promised her. He turned back and went into the loose box and hung the lantern on a harness peg. When he had lifted away the boards from the back wall, he reached down into the gap and pulled out the canvas bag. He took Nurse Gertrud Berendts’s fake ID over to the lamp and studied Marijke’s sombre little photograph, then put the booklet into his jacket pocket with his own. Just in case.

When he crossed the yard, the night sky was a vast tracery of stars.

Dart put the tray on the low table next to the lamp, where Koop could see what it held: a small bowl of broth, a slice of pulpy bread, and a glass of water. Dart took a cigarette from his packet and put that on the tray too. Then he sat down on the chair. Koop watched with rat-bright eyes.

“I didn’t betray you,” Dart said. He managed to keep the tone of his voice dead flat.

Koop turned his face away and said nothing.

“Think about it,” Dart said. “If I wanted you dead, I’d have killed you before now. A pillow over your face while you were unconscious. An overdose of morphine. I admit I considered it. Everyone would be a lot safer if you were out of the way. Especially the people here. And I like them a lot more than I like you.”

Koop’s gaze rested on the food. Eventually he said, “So why didn’t you?”

“Because you called me a traitor and I want to know why.”

“Give me some of that water.”

Dart stood and carried the glass to Koop, who took it in his right hand, which shook. Koop drank, urgently.

“Go slow,” Dart warned. When Koop leaned back, breathing fast, Dart took the glass and put it back on the tray. He sat down again. “For one thing, I didn’t even know where your group was hiding.”

Koop lost control of himself. “Of course you bloody did! You both did!” He shook his head from side to side, gasping, struggling to hold back tears of rage. “You bastard! Why are you doing this?”

Dart waited. Then he said quietly, “I’ll tell you again: I had no idea where you were.”

Koop took a long breath that had a sob in it. “He said, ‘I know where to find you.’
I know where to find you.
That’s what the bastard said to me. So don’t tell me you didn’t know as well.”

“He? You mean Tamar? When did he say this?”

“That morning. At De Woeste Hoeve.”

“What morning? You mean the morning of the executions? You were there? You went back?”

“Yeah.”

“Christ,” Dart said. “What . . . Why were you there?”

Koop didn’t answer.

“Cigarette?”

Koop shook his head stubbornly, a man nobly refusing a bribe. Then he sighed. “Yeah. Okay.”

Dart lit the cigarette and put it between the fingers of Koop’s right hand. Koop inhaled and coughed, and Dart could see the pain in the other man’s face as the spasm pulled at the wound in his back. He held the glass of water to Koop’s lips. Koop drank.

“I’m all right,” he said.

“Good.” Dart sat down again without taking his eyes from Koop’s face. “So you were there at De Woeste Hoeve that morning. And you met Tamar. Is that right?”

Koop exhaled smoke cautiously and watched it drift into the brightness of the lamp. He faced Dart for the first time. “Are you telling me you don’t know anything about this?”

Dart looked into Koop’s eyes and said, “Yes, that’s what I’m telling you. Tamar told me nothing about any of this.”

Koop smoked the rest of the cigarette in silence. Dart picked up the tray and carried it to the bed.

“You need to eat. Think you can manage?”

Koop drank the broth straight from the bowl. When he had drained the thin liquid, he ran his tongue round the inside of the bowl to get at the solid bits. The effort of all this seemed to exhaust him, and he slumped back against the headboard with his eyes closed. Dart felt the need to hurry now.

“Koop? Did you know Tamar was going to be there, that morning?”

“No. The bastard sneaked up on us from behind. We were looking at . . .” Koop’s eyes opened, blinked, then stayed open, staring at the lamp. “We were watching the road. He appeared from nowhere. He stuck his bloody Sten in my mouth.
In my mouth.
”

Beautiful, Dart thought. Perfect. But go carefully. He said, “But he didn’t pull the trigger. He could’ve blown your head off, Koop, but he didn’t.”

Now Koop turned his gaze on Dart, who had to force himself not to recoil. The man looked like a reptile choking on its own venom.

“Because he’s a gutless bastard. He couldn’t do the job himself, so he betrayed us to the bloody SS. He got them to do his dirty work, the scumbag.”

Koop groaned, clenching his yellow teeth. His breathing broke up into short desperate hisses. Dart watched him suffer for perhaps a quarter of a minute before he carried the chair to the bed.

“Koop. Listen to me. Tamar didn’t tell me where you and the others were. I didn’t know. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Dart waited until Koop opened his eyes, then he said, “How bad is the pain?”

“Bad enough.”

“I want to give you another shot of morphine. Then I need to change your dressings. Are you going to let me do that?”

Koop looked into Dart’s eyes, and Dart held his gaze.

“Yeah, all right,” Koop said. “What happened to your face?”

When Koop had fallen asleep, Dart went to the wireless room. The corridors were intensely dark, but darkness was his element now. He walked across the dispensary and through the false cupboard as if in broad daylight. When he had closed the concealed door behind him, he went to the bureau and lit the lamp. It created a balloon of uncertain light that left the corners of the little room in deep shadow. He was full of nervous excitement but very tired, and he had that familiar prickling under his skin as if his bloodstream were full of insects. He emptied the Benzedrine bottle onto the desk and counted the tablets, even though he already knew that there were only eighteen left. He put sixteen back into the bottle and washed the other two down with a mouthful of stale water.

He sat down and took a notepad and pencil from the bureau drawer, then smoked a cigarette while staring blankly at the paper. He stubbed it out and very quickly filled three quarters of a page with random letters arranged into groups of five. When he had finished he crumpled the paper into a ball then smoothed it out flat, folded it neatly three times, and put it in his pocket.

Despite the cold, he stripped down to his shirt. He dragged one of the batteries over to the recharger and connected the leads. He climbed onto the machine and began to pedal, unsteadily at first, but then with a fast robotic rhythm. The Benzedrine took him and lifted him. Soon he was beyond the threshold of hurt and exhaustion, flying across the night towards the beacon that was Marijke Maartens. At any moment she would turn to see him. And then he would watch it dawn in her face, the joyous understanding that their love had always been inevitable.

There are chance events. There are coincidences, and something people call luck. And there are happenings so perfect that they get called miracles. After the German raid on the asylum, long after, Dart decided that there had to be something else, some secret working of the world, that went beyond even the miraculous. If he hadn’t fallen asleep in his room fully dressed; if, despite his exhaustion, he hadn’t clicked awake at six in the morning. If the madwoman Sidona hadn’t somehow got out onto the front lawn for a long-delayed appointment with her angel. If the Germans had come straight into the asylum, rather than wasting precious time positioning their machine gunners on the road. If Koop had been unconscious, rather than struggling to his feet for some reason. If Sidona had blurted to an astute officer that there was a dark angel living in the roof. So many ifs — far too many to be dismissed as simple chance. The truth was that the world had wanted what he, Dart, wanted. He was being carried by the world’s hidden mechanisms towards what he was meant to do. There could be no other reasonable explanation.

He had snapped awake because the spiders were trying to suffocate him again, only to find that this time the spiders were his own hands. He’d pushed them away and gone to the window. His normal trembling became a cold shivering as the sweat cooled on his body. Light was seeping slowly into the bottom edge of the sky, and it took him some time to realize that it was raining.

He stood watching the slow growth of the dawn, and then his eye was caught by something white moving across the lawn. Sidona. The rain had plastered her white shift to her body; her breasts and belly and thighs were pinkly visible. Dart sighed and was halfway to the door when he heard Sidona begin a prolonged wail. He went back to the window to see her kneeling on the grass, arms outstretched towards the road. The SS vehicles paraded into his line of vision as if she had conjured them up: a staff car followed by two trucks, each with their canvas sides rolled up to reveal a machine gunner and maybe eight other men peering through the rain at the female lunatic. Dart almost died of shock. He could not move. The convoy halted, and now there was nothing to be heard other than the idling engines and the babble of Sidona’s unearthly language. Then someone shouted, in German, and there was laughter.